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Boisclair feels poised to win

TROIS RIVIÈRES, Que.–The sordid trail of André Boisclair's past cocaine use as a cabinet minister in the 1990s was replaced this week by the Parti Québécois leader's casual admission to reporters that he had consumed just three beers over more than 30 days on the Quebec election campaign.

By Allan WoodsOttawa Bureau

Sat., March 24, 2007

TROIS RIVIÈRES, Que.–The sordid trail of André Boisclair's past cocaine use as a cabinet minister in the 1990s was replaced this week by the Parti Québécois leader's casual admission to reporters that he had consumed just three beers over more than 30 days on the Quebec election campaign.

Coffee and water seem to be his drinks of choice these days as he tours the province at a frantic pace trying to close the deal with voters who are more divided and reticent in their political intentions than at any time in the last several decades. But it's an election Boisclair feels he is poised to win when voters head to the polls Monday.

As the 40-year-old Boisclair takes swigs of his water bottles behind the podiums in a blur of tiny party offices in Laval, in Saguenay, in Quebec City and in Montreal, he speaks of his dream, a Martin Luther King-type vision of a sovereign country called Quebec.

Boisclair, a former provincial minister of the environment, immigration and social services, is cast as a centre-right politician, but his vision, like the party he leads, is distinctly of the left.

It is a place where Quebecers represent themselves in the world, engage as equals with other countries, speak three and four languages, live in a green environment with the lowest university tuition fees in North America, don't have to wait for surgeries and share wealth evenly between the rich metropolis and the poor regions.

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"It is that which the sovereignty of Quebec will allow us to do," Boisclair said in a speech this week to students at the University of Montreal. "The sovereignty that I propose is the sovereignty of openness. It's the sovereignty of confidence, not of arrogance."

But it will take more than a dream to carry the PQ to victory. Boisclair has walked a fine line in an attempt to bridge right and left, sovereignist and nationalist, old Quebecer and young.

In the last week alone, he has blasted the Action démocratique du Québec's plan to clear off the welfare rolls, while attacking the director general of Quebec elections for allowing Muslim women to cast their vote while wearing niqabs that shield their faces. (That decision was reversed yesterday.) Boisclair also attacked an intervention in the election by Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who warned about the possible peril of a sovereignist win.

And he frequently casts back to PQ founder and idol René Lévesque, while telling the young it is time to create their own Quiet Revolution.

Yet, he has remained on the tightrope all along. The dynamic of the campaign at first had Péquistes who were disaffected by their leader – a young, openly gay Montrealer – fleeing to the right-wing ADQ. In the dying hours of the campaign, according to polls, it is now Liberal supporters running to the ADQ.

The impediment Boisclair must overcome if he is to win on election night is to lure Quebec's separatists back to his party. As Radio-Canada host Pierre Maisonneuve pointed out in an interview with Boisclair this week, support for the sovereignty option, which sits at 45 per cent, is greater than the support for its primary political vehicle, the PQ.

"There are people who are critical, and that's fine," Boisclair said. "I accept that and I can live with that, but when it comes down to it, we have the best platform, and that's why we're going to win March 26."

Still, the PQ leader's clarion call over the last week has been for all progressives, environmentalists, feminists – and pretty much every other group save for racists and polygamists – to come home.

The criticism, at first, shook the rookie leader, so much so that he tightened up in public and appeared unnatural, further driving people away, says University of Montreal political scientist Pierre Martin. Over the last four weeks, he was able to shed that image and present himself as confident and able.

"If anything can be said about André Boisclair ... it's that he was really able to regroup and reassemble his own troops," says Martin, a close observer of the PQ. "He was relatively successful in bringing back the solid sovereignists who had expressed doubts on his leadership, to somehow convince them that he can do the job."

Boisclair clearly feels that he deserves to win the contest, and he has run the cleanest campaign of the three frontrunners. He has taken to telling his supporters at rallies that the wind is blowing in the right direction, that he smells victory and that he has a special feeling when he is on the hustings, which he cannot put into words. In turn, those supporters have started referring to the PQ leader as the "next premier of Quebec."

"These are the most beautiful days of my political career," he told supporters at a rally in Saguenay. He went further yesterday, saying that "it feels like '76" – a reference to the first-ever PQ election victory under Lévesque.

If nothing else, Boisclair's steady, relatively gaffe-free management of the campaign has shown his maturing.

In the 15 months between his election as leader and this campaign, his opponents attacked him for poor judgment and immaturity. The revelation that he had used cocaine as a junior cabinet minister under former premier Lucien Bouchard hung over him like a storm cloud and was expected to come back to haunt him this time around.

So grave were the doubts about Boisclair that Premier Jean Charest called the election in late February, just one day after tabling a campaign friendly budget, based on favourable poll numbers that seemed to ensure his re-election. It was so bad for Boisclair that former PQ leader and premier Bernard Landry went on whatever television show would take him in January to criticize his successor. That dark period in Boisclair's political life ended with an admission of his failings and a promise to do better.

With the apprehended putsch in the past and the campaign in its final stretch, Landry was asked this week what had changed.

"His campaign was almost perfect, and before, he was not perfect," Landry said at a Montreal lunch where he sat with Boisclair. "Now, he is just like me."

But it is actually not as rosy for Landry's successor as the former premier suggests, and if he does not pull out a victory Monday night, his future at the head of his party is far from assured.

When he was named leader of the PQ in November 2005, Boisclair had 50 per cent support, said pollster Jean-Marc Léger of Montreal's Léger Marketing.

"When he started this election, he started at 30 per cent, so he lost (20 percentage points) in a year and a half because he didn't propose anything to Quebecers, nothing new," Léger said.

"During the election, he hasn't done so badly. There were no mistakes, it was a correct campaign for him, and probably he will succeed in maintaining his support, but the PQ at 30 per cent is the lowest result they've ever obtained since 1973."

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